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Socialism hinges on a belief in a general or unified will that is a myth. We are a diverse nation with diverse and competing interests and our Constitution is the most advanced political system ever devised for dealing with these competing interests. The belief in a unified interest becomes a justification for imposing one group’s interests on another. This is the essence of Hayek’s noted Road to Serfdom.

“From public choice theory, we also know that government actors have an incentive to pursue shortsighted policies that create highly visible benefits to voters now and impose uncertain costs at some point in the future.”

from Kevin Williamson at National Review, From Americans to Americans This is a dangerous moment in our history, about which we ought to be honest. President Donald Trump is an irresponsible demagogue who ought never have been elected to the office…

Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek quotes from Deirdre McCloskey’s outstanding Bourgeois Equality in his Bonus Quotation of the Day: Members of the left clerisy, such as Tony Judt or Paul Krugman or Thomas Piketty, who are quite sure that they…

from Cafe Hayek, Krugman and Other Stuff by Russ Roberts. When it’s convenient, Krugman ignores the “other stuff.” (We all do.) So according to Krugman, the economy of Kansas is struggling because the governor cut taxes. One variable explains everything. We can…

University of Chicago economist John Cochrane has written one of the most unique and insightful perspectives on inequality in his blog, The Grumpy Economist. Read Why and how we care about inequality in its entirety. It is about 6 pages long. excerpts:…

University of Chicago economist John Cochrane has written one of the most unique and insightful perspectives on inequality in his blog, The Grumpy Economist. Read Why and how we care about inequality in its entirety. It is about 6 pages long. excerpts:…

from What’s The Matter With Paul Krugman? by Steve Moore in The Investor’s Business Daily Excerpts: Krugman resorts to a line of argumentation that is all too typical of liberals: Cherry-picking a few events — the occasional high-tax state that…

from Mark Perry at Carpe Diem, Sorry Krugman, Piketty and Stiglitz: Income inequality for individual Americans has been flat for more than 50 years MP: This is a very important finding that: a) individual income inequality has been flat for more…

In a Charlie Munger interview he discusses the necessity of social virtue for Keynesian policies to work. Societies like ours, the Germans, or the Japanese have the virtues required for Keynesian stimulus to work. Greece on the other hand lacked…

from Kevin Wilson in The National Review, The Mapmaker’s Dilemma Excerpt: “The economy” is an abstraction, a way of talking about billions and billions of discrete activities and transactions that are too complex and fast-moving to be aggregated into something…

“Or is all that just pie in the sky? Economists are usually pessimists. They believe in the intractability of existing conditions, whether the inflation of the 1970s or the deficits of today. But here again, a glance at history is…

From Walter Russel Mead at The American Interest, Note to Paul Krugman: It Took More Than Markets to Ruin Detroit: Krugman is right that Detroit is essentially Ground Zero of the disruptive changes wrought by an economy in transition. But…

In The New York Times, Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman writes theTwinkie Manifesto, 11/18/12. In the article Krugman noted how we had strong economic growth in the 1950’s even with much higher tax rates and much stronger trade unions. But…

In The New York Times, Nobel prize winning fool (a growing breed) Paul Krugman writes the Twinkie Manifesto, 11/18/12. In the article Krugman suggests we return to the tax rates of the 1950 when the highest bracket was 91% and…

Economist John Cochrane writes in his worthy blog, The Grumpy Economist, Good Comments, 5/30/12. Excerpt: Economic analysis is more believable when it is non-partisan. I like commentators who make an effort to find silliness (and there is plenty of it)…

Some commentators have expressed a nostalgia for aspects of the economic world of the 1950s, as Paul Krugman suggested in his book The Conscience of a Liberal. I can understand the sentiment, since the 1950s brught a lot of growth,…

It is just when you hear the words that “this is not a war on the wealthy” that you can expect exactly that. During the Clinton years they put a cap on the wages of corporate executives. Only the first…

I find books like Tyler Cowen’s The Great Stagnation to be refreshing and valuable not because they are right or wrong but because they offer a different perspective that what we are commonly fed. Much of our policy from both…

In a 2004 article in the Nation, … Paul Krugman wrote that “According to estimates by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez- confirmed by data from the Congressional Budget Office- between 1973 and 2000 the average real income of…